Colombia scrambles with Y2K problems

Posted: Wednesday, December 08, 1999

The Associated Press

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - At age 59, Alvaro Rojas is just a few months from retirement and worried sick that his entire employment history will be erased by the dreaded Year 2000 computer bug. So he's seeking a written record.

"With all this fuss about the change of year, it's better to have everything on paper," Rojas says as he waits in line at a Social Security office, only to be told the document he needs can't possibly be ready until after the New Year.

Rojas has good reason to worry. The Social Security Institute, with the labor history for 4.5 million Colombians, still has not solved its Y2K problem.

The database software on which all pre-retirement records are kept is not compliant. The manufacturer says it's pirated.

Social Security officials refuse to buy the upgrade and are working feverishly to migrate all the data over to a different program - with no guarantee of success.

There are serious questions whether many other crucial government records systems - particularly in finance and health care - will be ready in time for the millennium bug. Contingency plans are already in full swing.

Clocks are being turned ahead on airport radars, mounds of public records are being printed out, some medical devices will be placed out of commission temporarily and many government workers will be getting their January paychecks in December.

Like many Latin American nations hit hard by last year's economic recession, Colombia has had to scramble for resources to confront Y2K, the legacy of computers programmed to express years with just two digits, so that 2000 could be read as 1900 in systems, causing crashes or garbling data.

Government Y2K coordinators say the public and private sectors have spent a total of $1.4 billion on bug fixes - nearly 2 percent of gross domestic product - and that utilities, transportation and the financial sector are in good shape.

The central bank, however, will have 57 percent more cash on hand to bolster liquidity.

In terms of readiness, there are doubts about everything from traffic lights in mid-sized and small cities to the nation's air traffic control.

"The country is about 70 percent ready," says Hernando Carvalho, a congressman and Y2K expert who says Colombia was very late in launching its repair work.

The pension system is a case in point.

The Latin America vice president for Unify, the California software company whose program has been used by the Social Security agency for nine years to track Colombian labor history, says the agency has refused to pay for the upgrade and license it needs to protect it from Y2K.

Instead, Karen Joslyn said, it is using pirated software. "Basically, they stole the program," she said.

Social Security's Y2K coordinator, Leonardo Chavarro, says its Colombian supplier is to blame for the alleged pirating and that Unify is demanding an exorbitant price for the upgrade. So another company is writing a new program to which all the data will be transferred by mid-December, he says.

Computer consultants say such last-minute data migration doesn't leave enough time for identifying and removing errors. Besides, large software projects, as a rule, are never done on time.

In health care, the already overburdened public hospital system is seriously lagging and officials say many billing systems and some life-sustaining devices will not be ready on time.

"One possible scenario is that someone will arrive at a hospital with their health ID card and will be rejected because no one will be able to confirm they've paid their bills," Carvalho said.

In the eastern regional capital of Bucaramanga, only in mid-November did work begin on public hospital computers. In other regions, funds have not yet even arrived to start repairs.

Authorities say some medical devices in public hospitals nationwide - including respirators, X-ray and ultrasound machines - won't be Y2K compliant on time and will be removed from service for the first days of 2000.

Civil aviation is also a serious concern, as 80 percent of north-south flights in South America pass over this rugged Andean nation.

Contingency plans call for switching flight monitoring to manual control if necessary.

As if the technological and financial challenges of Y2K readiness weren't difficult enough, Colombia is also plagued by a decades-old civil conflict in which leftist rebels regularly blow up oil pipelines and electrical towers.